40th

This is my 40th post as What’s Shaking Man. I also just attended my 40 year high school reunion this past Saturday. I am lucky to live close enough that I can go every time we have one. In fact, I was the only one to register to attend our 20th reunion. How could that be? Besides poor planning and worse publicizing, it could be because I only graduated with 73 other students. Yes, it was a small private school. I had gone to public schools my whole life, but chose private high school because at the time it was the only one in our area with a soccer team.

Unrelated to going to private school and playing soccer, I started to lose my sense of smell - often a precursor to Parkinson’s - in high school. I think I first noticed it when I was not repulsed entering the boys locker room. I remember classmates asking me, “Do you smell that? Gross isn’t it?” I always agreed but could not confirm or deny. The old “whoever smelt it dealt it” no longer worked with me.

While I still can’t smell, a lot has changed in the Parkinson’s world. 40 years ago Michael J. Fox was not even thinking of Parkinson’s. Levodopa was the primary and only treatment. There was no known surgeries for Parkinson’s. DBS was not a reality until the 2000s, and was not approved for use in Parkinson’s patients until 2012. I’m not even sure Young Onset was recognized as a sub-type of Parkinson’s like it is today. It was an old person‘s disease. There were no studies on the benefits of exercise. There were no Parkinson’s boxing programs. There was no ping-pong for Parkinson's. There was no Parkinson’s specific physical and speech therapy programs. Sure, research was making strides, but they had a long way to go.

They still have a long way to go, but there are many advancements over the 40 years. I enjoyed my reunion because of these advances. I saw old friends and reminisced about times before Rytary (Website), Rock Steady Boxing (Website), BIG and LOUD programs (Website), and DBS (Website). We shared stories about teachers we remember and parties we went to. We relived sports achievements. We talked about times before I lost my sense of smell. Times when the locker room was gross and I might have “dealt it.”